Summary: Interwoven stories of people in India and US as they face dilemmas of life time in the months leading to the biggest Industrial disaster in human history that claimed 10,000 innocent lives within a few hours. Inspired by real events.

Bhopal:
A Prayer for Rain is a historical drama film directed by Indian filmmaker Ravi
Kumar. Co-written by David Brooks and Kumar himself, the movie presents a highly
dramatized version of the events that led to the Bhopal disaster, often
referred to as the Bhopal gas tragedy, on the night of 2–3 December 1984 at the
Union Carbide India Limited pesticide plant in Bhopal, the capital of the
Indian state of Madhya Pradesh. The disaster was caused by the accidental
leakage of methyl isocyanate gas and other toxic chemicals which spread around the
shanty towns located near the plant, threatening lives of lakhs and killing thousands.
The movie stars Martin Sheen, Mischa Barton, Kal Penn, Rajpal Yadav, Tannishtha
Chatterjee, Manoj Joshi and Joy Sengupta in the major roles. The movie is
produced by Sahara Movie Studios and Rising Star Entertainment and distributed
by Revolver Entertainment.
The movie is slotted to release on Friday, 5th December 2014 in theatres across India. This critic got the opportunity to catch it during a special press screening on Wednesday, 3rd December at Odeon Cinema in Central Delhi.

Martin Sheen as Warren Anderson

Bhopal:
A Prayer for Rain succeeds in capturing brilliantly, through its motley of
interesting characters, the chaos that became associated with one of the greatest
tragedies in modern history. The movie serves as a powerful social commentary that
poignantly depicts the plight of the poor in Third World countries like India
during the latter part of the 20th century. These countries generally
suffered from lack of industrialization, extremely low per capita incomes, low
literacy rates, high population growth, poor health and sanitation facilities,
weak transport infrastructure, and overdependence on agriculture and allied
activities. The movie also launches a scathing
attack on crony capitalism—a notorious brand of capitalism prevalent in Asian
countries wherein success in business depends on the nexus between opportunistic
businessmen and corrupt government officials.

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Tannishtha Chatterjee (right) and Rajpal Yadav

Despite
going down in the annals of history as one of the major disasters of the 20th
century, Bhopal gas tragedy strangely enough hadn’t hitherto managed to become
the subject of any major motion picture. And, that’s precisely what inspired
Ravi Kumar to make a movie on the seemingly forbidden subject. Kumar explains: “To my
surprise there was little interest from Bollywood or even UK film industry to
make a dramatic thriller about a subject with tremendous potential about corporate
greed, environment disaster and the spicy mix of politics and multinational
giant’s profit driven agenda.” Kumar got the idea for the movie from Mr.
Sanjoy Hazarika’s book “Bhopal - Lessons Of A Gas Tragedy,” which he had read
in 2005. After reading the book, Kumar was bowled over by the thought of a making
a major feature film on the subject. Kumar asserts: “The reason for making this film
is not to play the blame game, but learn from history so another tragedy can be
avoided. We wanted to make an international feature film with major stars for
the world audience who do not know about the tragedy.”

Mischa Burton in Bhopal: A Prayer for Rain

Bhopal:
A Prayer for Rain has come as a great respite at a time when the element of
realism is on the wane in Indian cinema at large. The movie serves as a great
example of how the power of cinema can be leveraged upon to bring important
historical events back to life for the older generations to relive them and for
the coming generations to learn from the mistakes of their predecessors. History
as a genre is still quite new to the India cinema and a lot needs to be done
before it starts getting treated like some of the more conventional genres. The
movie is far from being a perfect adaptation of the Bhopal gas tragedy. While
the movie captures the essence of the tragedy really well, the narrative, at times,
seems to suffer from certain structural flaws. In the act of dramatizing the
events so as to make the end product appear more palatable to the masala
audiences, the movie, more often than not, appears to be digressing a bit from
its central theme. But then it was never supposed to be a documentary of sorts.

A Still from Ravi Kumar's Bhopal: A Prayer for Rain

Overall, Bhopal: A Prayer for Rain can best be described as a brutal but honest attempt on the
part of its makers to capture on the celluloid the chaos associated with the Bhopal
gas tragedy. It's not great cinema but it's definitely thought-provoking. Despite commercial obligations, and, to its credit, the movie
doesn’t deviate much from propagating the hard facts pertaining to the mishap.
As a social commentary on India of the 1980s, the movie packs a powerful
punch. On the technical front, there isn’t much to complain about: be it cinematography,
sound, or editing. The acting is solid all around, thanks to the presence of an
international ensemble cast led by the veteran American actor Martin Sheen and
renowned Indian actor Rajpal Yadav. Both Sheen and Yadav are excellent in their
respective roles, as are Mischa Barton, Kal Penn, and Tannishtha Chatterjee. The
movie features some highly graphic sequences towards the end which may repulse
the faint-hearted viewers. The movie is meant for serious filmgoers only; the
casual viewers are advised to stay away from it. A must watch for those
who admire realism in cinema!

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Murtaza Ali Khan is an independent film critic / journalist based out of New Delhi, India. He has been writing on cinema for over seven years. He runs the award-winning entertainment blog A Potpourri of Vestiges. He is also the Films Editor at the New York City-based publication Cafe Dissensus and regularly contributes to The Hindu and The Sunday Guardian. He was previously a columnist at Huff Post. He has also contributed to publications like DailyO, Newslaundry, The Quint, Dear Cinema, Desimartini and Jamuura Blog. He regularly appears as a guest panelist on the various television channels and is also associated with radio.